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We meet new clients all the time, and 9 times out of 10 they don’t trust IT people, they don’t want to spend money on IT and they are basically just “winging it” to keep things moving along.

Some people have been able to get along without any problems and minimal IT investment. Those are the lucky people!

The rest of the world invests a lot of time with data entry, billing and this requires their network to be stable and accessible.

When we meet clients and propose our proactive plans, it’s generally met with a little bit of shock. “I’ve never had to spend money on IT, this is too much!”

And then…

…they have their oops moment. This is generally an event that takes their business down for an extended period of time or they have a major server crash that causes major data and financial loss.

We hate these moments because not only do we have to clean up a huge mess, we’re basically in rescue mode. We have a companies reputation and future at stake!

At the same time, we love these moments because we get our opportunity to shine and show how reliable IT can really be.

Here are 7 things you can do to make sure you never experience an oops moment!

1. Backups. Backups. Backups. Did I mention backups, because backups are so important. Backing up to a USB key isn’t reliable, nor is burning to a dvd drive and backing up to that USB hard drive. USB Keys can get lost easily, the memory inside them has a lifespan that can wear out. DVD drives generally skip the “verify” stage so you never know how good your data really is. USB hard drives while may seem great generally only have one backup on them, they are usually transported outside of a case. So damaging the drive can happen easily.

We recommend an offsite backup solution and an onsite tape solution. Both offer the ability to get email alerts so you *know* your backup occurred and is available. You want to have at a minimum 14 backups so it’s easy to go back and restore.

2. Invest in a proper server. I don’t mean something that has a “server” motherboard in it. I mean a product that has a computer know for servers behind it like, HP Dell or Super Micro. These machines are designed to be redundant and stay on at all costs. They go as far as allowing you to mirror your memory! They also have things like redundant power supplies and hard drives. They also allow for IT companies to have the means to monitor for failures in real time. So monitoring becomes very important.

3. UPS aka Uninterpretable Power Supply – What you buy at cost vs what you buy from us will be two different beasts. It’s kind of like a mechanic that buys all his tools from the Snap-On dealer vs Princess Auto. This applies here too. We recommend the APC Smart UPS line. They ensure your equipment has very clean power and have the option of a network card so you can monitor directly from the ups over the network.

4. Standardization – while this one seems like a no brainer a lot of people don’t know about it. Basically buy the same computer, same monitor etc for your whole office. This allow for easy repair of computers and even diagnosing a problem. For example if you have 10 computers all with windows loaded the same, all the same windows updates etc, they should operate at exactly the same speed. But lets say one user who truly hasn’t modified their computer starts to have problems with the computer crashing. You could spend a lot less time diagnosing the problem, move the hard drive to another identical computer and they are up and running in minutes. Now you just have to deal with a warranty situation and not an employee with down time.

5. Routers – Make sure your router is locked down from anyone trying to hack it from the outside. This may not seem obvious but a lot of routers have out dated firmware that can allow someone to hack your router giving you access to your network.

6. SPAM – Not the meat! But just as bad! – use an email provider that uses a reputable spam filter. For example we use the Barracuda Spam Appliance. Barracuda is a leading provider of e-mail software that helps in the battle against unwanted spam.

7. Outsource your network security – We might be a touch bias but we feel that hiring a reputable company to manage your hosting and security is one of the smartest decisions you can make. You don’t want the liability to fall on your shoulders when an attack renders all computers on your network useless.

The Consumer Electronics Show is one of the coolest times of the year! Many of our favourite tech giants (think Samsung and Apple) always unveil their latest ground-breaking gadgets, while newer entrants to the tech scene try to make a splash.

This year had hundreds upon hundreds of cool, weird, and amazing new tech gadgets were shown, but what really stood out to us were the gadgets that are trying to make our homes “smarter” and more connected. Things like the Nest thermostat, which most of us have probably heard of by this point, and a coffee pot you control with your phone.

We decided to compile our top 4 favourite Smart-Home Gadgets of CES 2015.

Welcome to the future.

1. The August Connect

The August Connect builds on August’s already great SmartLock. “How?”, you might ask. The August Connect plugs into an outlet near the SmartLock to provide the lock with a WiFi signal. With the lock connected to the internet, you can check on the status of your lock at anytime, from anywhere, or even unlock the door for the cable guy while you’re on vacation. Very cool!

2. The Ring to Rule Them All

Excuse our Lord of The Rings reference. It had to be done. This has to be one of the coolest high-tech gadgets we stumbled upon. Essentially, you can control many different devices in your home, all with the gesture of your finger. Check out the video above to see what we mean.

3. Brewing Beer in your Kitchen?

Now this one may not make your home “smarter”, but it will definitely make your parties have a little extra pizazz! The PicoBrew Zymatic is a relatively small home brewing system that can brew around 3 gallons of fresh beer for you in about 4 hours. It can be controlled via a connected smartphone with its WiFi capabilities. It can even access 100s of recipes in PicoBrew’s cloud-hosted library. Cheers to that!

4. Lightbulbs That Stop Intruders?

Last but not least, the Sengled Snap lightbulb. This one takes the cake. Not only does this lightbulb have WiFi capabilities, and the ability to do such things as turn on your stereo system, but it has facial recognition capabilities. That’s right; facial recognition. This lightbulb has a built in security camera that can record video and a microphone that can pick up any sounds. Home security just got a lot brighter!

1. How would you know if and when you have a virus?

How are you informed? Will it be weeks? Months before you find out? How do find out?

We use a manage anti-virus solution, when you get a virus our helpdesk immediately is notified and we let you know, usually by phone call.

2. How reliable is your backup?

Backing up to a single external hard drive isn’t the most secure, what if a burglar grabs your laptop AND external hard drive, then what? You need an offsite backup, preferably a physical one managed by your IT company as well as a backup stored in the cloud.

You never want to just have one backup for your vital information. If you lose your computer and the backup you’re in a bad spot. Don’t ever get to that point by having a secondary backup.

3. What Spam filter do you use for your e-mail?

Most e-mail clients (Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail) have the built in spam filter but that’s no match for the phishing emails that can get through without paying for a dedicated e-mail spam filter.

4. How do you monitor your network?

We always ask customers if their network is monitored, and generally people will respond with something like their server has mirrored hard drives, so they are ok.

Ok, so what if one of those mirrored drives fails. Usually, they aren’t sure how they would find out, and we jokingly say, when the second drive fails. However, this doesn’t have to be the case, monitoring servers, networks etc can be very easy.

When our customers have a drive fail, instead of the drive being out of service for who knows how long, we are generally onsite within an hour to replace the drive.

5. If your network goes down and you lose all of your files, who would be held accountable?

The proper answer from your IT company is “don’t worry, that could never happen! We have two different backups, stored in different locations. Besides two simultaneously occurring natural disasters in Canada, your data is backed-up and safe.”

If you lose valuable information to a security breach or network failure you are going to need a resolution. Your IT provider should guarantee network up time

Most phones come with a factory “bright” setting. Go into your settings and play around with the brightness tab. Some phones have an auto brightness feature where your phone can react to the sunlight or no light and adjust accordingly. These types of features save your battery life.

2. Set your screen timeout to 15 or 20 seconds.

The longer your screen remains lit during your day to day activities the more battery life it uses. The default setting on most phones is 1 minute. You may not think about it but the timeout period of your screen affects your battery life as you’re on and off your phone periodically through out the day. The more you use your phone the more the “timeout” period matters.

3. Turn off Wifi, Bluetooth, and location services.

Location based services arguably shouldn’t come from the factory set to “on”. Apple got in a little heat over this very issue when documents leaked that every iPhone tracks the location of the phone whether you like it or not. Might be a good idea to turn off location-based services for now, possibly for ever. Sure you won’t be much of a hit on Friends Finder (or Creep-a-Friend as we call it) but hey, was the stalking all of your friends all it was cracked up to be?

Bluetooth is also an easy one. Keep it off unless you’re driving and expecting a call. Otherwise, what the heck are you trying to connect to via Bluetooth?!

Lastly, Wifi. Wifi is a tough one because you want to use it much more than Mobile Data, the signal stronger, the internets faster, you can get more done, but at what cost? The life of your battery that what costs! If you’re trying to conserve your battery life you may want to go sans Wifi.

4. Download an app that helps preserve battery life.

I’ve used Juice Defender (on Android, sorry Apple Fans) for over a year now. It gives you several different options as to how much battery juice you want defend. I usually have it set to “Casual” but if you wanted to conserve more power, I’d suggest a setting of “aggressive” or “extreme”.

An app like this knows more about your phone you do. It finds where your phone is putting in too much work and throttles it back, saving your battery those precious percentages when you really need it.

5. Take a look see as to what’s using the most power.

On most smart phones in the settings application, you can find the battery and what is using the most power on your phone. Maybe it’s an app you rarely use, maybe it’s an app you’ve been meaning to delete (ehem, Facebook). Either way find the apps that are sucking the most power and uninstall, uninstall, UNINSTALL!

It has become a common trend for IT providers to hold their clients’ services for ransom. This is in attempt to keep their clients by fear of losing their services, instead of doing a good job. Here are a few tips on how you can keep your services running and not be at the whim of a controlling 3rd party provider.

Protection From Web Developers:

Recently we re-posted a link from the BDC about being held hostage by your web developer. Here are some of the tips that we suggest that will help you avoid this in the future.

Own Your Domain: when registering your domain, make sure you are the administrator on the account and that you are not leasing your domains from your developer. Alternatively, register domains with an IT professional and not through the developer.

Web Hosting: It is common practice for web developers to also host your website. We encourage using a separate company for hosting the website. This provides an easy transition from developer to developer in the event you wish to refresh your site every couple of years. You can simply provide the developer access rather than moving the site.

Use a Common Development Platform: For small businesses, we encourage a common development platform, such as WordPress. By using a common platform, the selection base of developers is much wider. More importantly, you are not held hostage by an expensive custom platform that only your developer can work with.

Protection From IT Providers:

Our business focuses on being a Managed IT Solution provider and maintains clients by providing valued services. There is also significant trust and transparency that must come from that relationship. Not everyone conducts business on the same ethical level. Here are some tips on how to hold your IT provider accountable.

Know Who Owns your Software: We encourage small business to own all their software. It is practice for some IT providers to lease or rent software licenses to their clients, while retaining the licenses for themselves. We understand that software can be an expensive upfront cost but discourage from leasing if you will not eventually own the licenses.

Backup Strategy: Having a clear and redundant backup strategy will eliminate the risk of your data being held hostage by IT providers. We encourage knowing where your data is located and having it on multiple mediums, such as Off-Site Backup, Disk and Tape. This will allow you to switch providers without risking data loss.

Passwords: Knowing your passwords is by far one of the easiest ways not to be help hostage by your IT provider. Ask your provider for a binder with all your passwords in it, this will give you control over your network. It will also allow another company to take over your network with ease, should you wish to do so.

As our business environment changes to be more and more technology dependent, the technology costs will also continue to rise. It is important to have options and flexibility with your IT providers and not feel you are caught between a rock and a hard place. Technology and IT providers should add value to your business, not cause you headaches. As business owners, its important to let IT professionals do what they do best – but be smart and keep yourself protected.

As our clients are well aware, I am the VoIP expert at KSP. I want to speak about the versatility of our Business Phone Networks and more specifically the ability to use a Softphone -Client for mobile use.
A Softphone-Client by definition is software that allows you to make calls over the internet, often mimicking a traditional telephony system. For our purposes we utilize it to connect to our already existing VoIP phone network using a smartphone, tablet or computer. It allows us to be away from the office, but answer our incoming calls on our mobile devises as if we were sitting at our desks. This is a benefit to our clients because it keeps our Help Desk accessible, even if we are not in the office.

Recently one of our clients traveled to Paris for business, and had a real desire to stay connected to his office while being there. In today’s business environment, owners and employees need to feel confident that they can make critical decisions while still being away from the office. He was able to connect to his KSP Business Phone Network from his iPhone over Wifi. The benefits to him were that he eliminated costly international phone charges, ability to call transfer throughout his network by using phone extensions and the anonymity it gave him by answering his phone as if he were at his desk.

Give us a call if you are interested in knowing more about VoIP or Softphone-Clients